What is Performance?

As we design and test for performance, let’s look beyond speed. Let’s look beyond basic stability. Let’s look at the many facets of performance. Consider in which ways your system needs to perform. How fast does it need to be? How long does it need to keep running? Does it need to grow? Does it need to be available at all times? How much can we spend? Can we make it faster?

There are endless questions we could ask. Therefore, categorizing facets of performance and creating tests for each category can be helpful. However, let’s not fail to look at the interaction between these categories.

OFAT (One Factor At a Time) testing (as exampled in the above performance testing checklist excerpt) often fails to provide information related to the interaction between the categories. Let’s do some MFAT (Multiple Factors At a Time) testing and analysis. Let’s look at the system as a whole. Let’s mix it up. Let’s consider how these facets interact. Let’s create test scenarios that include multiple facets.